The US Geological Survey takes space resources and mining seriously

Pay potential? The moon of the Earth seen from the international space station.

(NASA / ESA)

The US Geological Survey (USGS) is beginning to seriously evaluate the spatial resources for future exploitation.

Since its inception in the 1870s, the USGS focuses primarily on the Earth. But now he is also studying the benefits that may or may not exist in the exploitation of water, minerals and extraterrestrial metals.

The agency seeks to accurately describe how humanity could exploit off-shore assets – a no-frills approach that contrasts with the estimates of trillions of dollars in profits made by some less scientific space defense advocates. [Photos: The Search for Water on the Moon]

Proven expertise

Last June, several USGS experts participated in a roundtable on space resources held at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.

"The space resources community will benefit greatly from the collaboration with the USGS to assess the location and value of minerals, energy and water on the moon, Mars and asteroids," said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources. the Colorado School of Mines.

The USGS offers proven expertise and an unbiased and quantitative approach to characterize terrestrial resources, Abbud-Madrid told Space.com. This know-how "can also lead to reliable and indispensable geological maps for a more accurate selection of landing sites and resource deposits," he said.

It should also be noted that the new director of the USGS, Jim Reilly, is a geoscientist and a former astronaut of NASA. During her 13-year NASA career, Reilly completed three space shuttle missions, five spacewalks, and accumulated over 856 hours in orbit.

Multi-faceted problem

The exploitation of space resources is a fascinating and multifaceted problem, said Laszlo Kestay, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.

"The USGS has been paying increasing attention to the issue of space resources for several years," Kestay told Space.com. The factors are different, he said. For example, the US human space program seems to focus on missions to distant spaces, where space resources are extremely valuable. In addition, commercial efforts to extract space resources are gaining momentum.

Kestay pointed to the USGS 'increased responsibility for the Landsat satellites, a venerable series of Earth observation spacecraft. The USGS is now considered one of the US space agencies, he added.

"The USGS has realized that our congressional mandate to evaluate natural resources is expanding to space," Kestay said.

At present, the USGS does not have a funded program to conduct comprehensive assessments of space resources. "But we anticipate that the USGS may have to do this soon, and we are taking a number of steps to prepare for this eventuality," he said.

Building trust

Kestay highlighted USGS participation in workshops on space resources. In addition, there is the Feasibility Study for the Quantitative Assessment of Mineral Resources in Asteroids of 2017, conducted by Kestay, who showed that the water and metal resources of asteroids close to the Earth were enough to support humanity.

"At this point, we have done enough work to be sure that the methods used by the USGS to evaluate mineral, energy and water resources on Earth can be used to evaluate space resources with minimal modifications", said Kestay. "We have also done enough preliminary work to identify some areas in which humanity's lack of knowledge will cause extremely important uncertainties in the assessments undertaken today."

Follow the water

"Lunar ice would be a good example of a resource that we do not understand enough to provide accurate estimates," Kestay said.

Attempting such an assessment could still be "useful", he said, as it helps to identify the most critical information that future missions must collect.

"It may be as counterintuitive that we better understand the ice on Mars than on our own moon, but NASA's" Follow the Water "strategy [on the Red Planet] provided a wealth of knowledge, "said Kestay. Finally, it is clear, even before undertaking a comprehensive evaluation, that there are significant resources in the space to be evaluated! " [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars]

Lessons learned

Lawrence Meinert, emeritus scientist of the USGS, told attendees of the School of Mines that no major mining company would support the huge cost of developing a new mine on Earth without a model. detailed resources.

"Given the still higher costs of space travel and development, new space resource models and new assessment techniques are essential for the practical development of space resources," Meinert said.

Lessons learned from land-based exploration, exploitation and evaluation can be applied to space resources, Meinert said. "This is not just the excitement of new knowledge, there are some things you need to do. One of them characterizes what you are going to develop," he said. he told Space.com.

Policy, investment decision

Spatial resource assessments will require a combination of remote sensing and physical sampling to better limit the actual compositions of asteroids, moon and planets at a scale appropriate for resource classification and potential use, Meinert said.

"This information can then be used to inform resource evaluation models that have been developed and successfully used on Earth," Meinert concluded. "These model assessments will be fundamental to guide policy and investment decisions regarding the emerging field of space resources."

This version of the story published on Space.com.